Our Lady of the Prairie

by Thisbe Nissen

  6

  * * *

  THE SCREEN DOORS OF DISCRETION

  In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness.

  —Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

  I HAD NEVER been so ill prepared to teach as I was that autumn. Fall semester often catches me by surprise, despite the fact that I can see it coming like a storm over the cornfields. I suppose I have what they call poor planning skills. The first few weeks were madness: add/drop, Drood auditions, callbacks, casting, commuting from Prairie. Sweet man though Brent Furman is, he’s no Mary Poppins. Magically industrious bluebirds hadn’t descended on White Rabbit Road to sweep the cobwebs with tiny brooms clasped in their wings, and the house did not sparkle with Disney shine. I made a few attempts to render it habitable, but the place needed an industrial cleaning and I finally shelled out for professionals. It also needed a paint job, and though I wasn’t about to tackle the exterior unless I bought it, the interior was imperative. I bought a few gallons of white paint, but then Randall said something about primer, and I didn’t know—was it necessary? I couldn’t deal; the cans sat in my kitchen, patient as toadstools. I spent hours on hold with the phone company trying to get a land line installed: the earliest appointment was late September. What possibly had them so busy at Prairie Country Telephone? I wondered if the ghost lady had phone service. I called Lucius on my cell when I could, but there was little time. Probably for the best. I was resigned to being a lousy professor and virtually turned Drood over to the AD, a perfectly competent senior. I did not possess the necessary exuberance for musical theater. My life had fallen apart, and everyone knew it.

  Lucius came to visit in September as planned. My directions took him past the stone cottage, but he arrived late and road-weary and forgot to look for the ghost lady’s window. We’d been apart more than two months. Shy, we held each other on my futon mattress. I offered him a drink, but Lucius said what he really wanted after that drive was a shower. One look at my rust-streaked stall, though, and he said, “Why don’t we go get a room at the Gas Stop?” It felt like a painful step backward to admit my new home was uninhabitably depressing, but I agreed. Donna Presidio found us a room, and I allowed myself to be led down the familiar hallway. Lucius took a shower, and then I let him make love to me on the red velour blanket I knew so well.

  The next morning we woke late, anxious and ill at ease. I suggested brunch at the Liberty Grill, so we drove Lucius’s car out into the stunning day—the kind of September when grass was green and grain was yellow—and started to feel better. Even the W barn on 26 didn’t look so menacing as the sun streamed in our rolled-down windows and we zipped toward fresh orange juice, eggs Florentine, house-smoked bacon. We parked at the hardware store just as the owner was locking up—Saturday 8–12, Always Closed Sunday—and walked to the Grill. A small crowd waited out front for tables; I should have known it’d be packed. The sun grew too hot. We hadn’t had coffee, and by the time we were seated, Lucius and I were both peevish. In a corner of the café sat a few U of I administrators; I didn’t say hello. A colleague with out-of-town guests was seated a few tables away; I pretended not to notice. I felt incapable of exchanging pleasantries.

  We frittered the afternoon away at what passes for tourism in southeast Iowa: walking the fossil gorge trail, visiting the raptor center and the octagonal barn. We drank a beer at the covered bridge and browsed the antiques mall on 24 where Lucius, impressed by the vintage postcards, spent the better part of an hour flipping through the contents of two oak file cabinets. He found a few that were relevant to his work, and I bought one of Le Havre, a steamship pulling out to sea. I imagined Bena on deck, wrapped in her rabbit fur quilt, watching France recede.

  We spent another night at the Gas Stop, and on Sunday morning, before he left to drive home, I called the Yoders to see if we might stop by. I got Silas on his cell, down at the straw bale site, and caught him off guard. He sounded hesitant, but he agreed. I couldn’t bear for Lucius to just get in his car and leave, everything between us feeling false and wispy and unsaid. Childishly, I’m sure I was pushing until something gave. I knew the stop at Eula’s was wrong.

  We went to the Prairie Bakery for cinnamon rolls and carried them to the house like an offering. People were congregated in the kitchen. At the door I called, “Hi, all—this is Lucius.”

  “Hi, Phillipa. Hi, Lucius,” their voices in unison, like a twelve-step meeting or a kindergarten class. I handed Eula the cinnamon rolls; icing had seeped through the box. Linda was at the table beside Randall, who had one foot on sleeping Oren’s bouncy seat, pumping it with vigor.

  “Hi, everyone,” Lucius said with a little wave. I was awful to put them through this.

  “Lucius,” I said, “you remember Linda and Randall.” They looked suspicious and wary. “And here’s Silas!” I cried, too exuberantly. “Silas, Lucius. Lucius, Silas.” My tongue twisted idiotically. Silas gave a little bow, and Lucius bowed back, and I thought how much these two would like each other if given the chance. “That’s Oren,” I pointed, “and Eula. Where’s Gin?”

  Movement stalled. Everyone looked to Silas, who said, “She’s lying down,” and I saw what was happening: she’d told him to say she was sleeping, but he didn’t want to lie, could only say “lying down,” which was technically true, though it choked him nonetheless. An awkward moment ensued, then Randall’s foot slipped from the bouncy chair and Oren woke screaming. Eula swooped, whisked him up, and fled to the porch to nurse. I tried to speak: “Oh, okay. Well, tell her . . . that I’ll see her this week . . .” I looked to Linda and said, “I’ll call you about Ginny-sitting?” and she nodded quickly. I stammered that Lucius needed to hit the road, then said, “I’m sorry. We’ll go. We should never have come.” I turned to Lucius in tears, and his look was so piteous I spun from the kitchen and flew past Eula and Oren on the porch—“I’m sorry!” I tripped down the steps, a bumbling moron, my every support cast wantonly aside. Free-falling, I stumbled to the car. If the Honda had had automatic locks, I was sure Lucius would have aimed the remote and kept me out. I’d thrown away everything; if Lucius left me, I’d have to hitch back to White Rabbit. I was a foolish woman who’d trashed her life for some whim she’d been calling love.

  I skidded past the car; the humidity gagged me like a wet sock. I heaved, hands to knees, and hung there, gasping. I’d catch my breath, I thought, and then keep running until I dropped dead in a cornfield or got hit by an SUV. But Lucius came from behind and took hold of me, arms around my waist. I coughed, Heimliched; coffee lurched in my throat. “Whoa.” His voice was low, modulated. “Whoa.” I let him bear my weight as I panted like a horse. “Whoa.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear my own reflection in his eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking, how I even thought for a minute that would be okay—”

  “Phil, stop.” He turned me around, let me burrow into him. “It’s okay,” he said, and it wasn’t okay, but God, I wanted his comfort. I wanted so much to feel comforted.

  Lucius dropped me at White Rabbit. I had pushed, and something had given, but as I lay on my futon, hours passed, and though I didn’t feel whole, I didn’t feel quite so broken. I lay there thinking how we humans are all like a big field of reeds, all propped together and swaying—the weak, the broken, the strong, and the hale. Swaying reeds for Kerry-Edwards. I slept, woke in my own drool in the midday sun, got up, and went into the bathroom to pee. From the floor I grabbed a bottle of rust remover stuff I’d bought and, still on the toilet, sprayed it at the shower wall. In the kitchen, I drank water from a jug, got a scrub brush, and returned to the shower, where I went at the livid rust stains with toxic chemicals, then with baking soda and vinegar, until it no longer looked like Janet Leigh was murdered there. Then I pried open a can of paint. I was totally unprepared for my classes that week, but I whitewashed my goddamn house.

  IT WAS LINDA and Randall who called me to action, to hit t
he streets, door to door, for our Johns, Kerry and Edwards. Randall changed out of his Dedicated to Service & Quality work shirt and into A Stronger America. He collected buttons—It Ain’t Over ’Til Your Brother Counts the Votes, One Nation Under Surveillance, Show George the Door in 2004, Reelect Gore—and Eula gave him a pair of Obadiah’s suspenders to pin them to. I like to think Orah and Obadiah would have supported us, to imagine them at the farmers’ market with Eula, NOV. 2 flyers wedged between dill loaves. Quilts and propaganda: Plain People for Kerry.

  Randall’s truck was impractical for campaigning—even with the snowplow removed, it got the gas mileage of a double-decker bus—so we took my car, but that meant I had to drive, since neither of them could work a stick. Randall had to push the passenger seat all the way back and wedge his legs under the glove compartment. Linda navigated from the back seat. There were rules: we had lists of registered Democrats but we weren’t supposed to tell anyone to “Vote Kerry-Edwards,” only to stress the importance of voting in such a close election, encourage those inclined to cast a Democratic vote to get out and cast it. At our first stop, Randall was so eager to extract himself from the discomfort of the car that he was up the walk and knocking exuberantly before Linda and I unfastened our seat belts. A curtain moved, someone peered out, then ducked away fast and ran through the house shutting off lights as if no one was home. Our second stop was a modular “Victorian” in a cornfield where we interrupted a dinner party. The hostess looked me in the eye and said, “I sure as hell will be at the polls, and sure as hell not for Kerry.” She spat his name like a foul taste, then turned with gutsy pleasure to her guests—not the Democratic crowd we’d expected—inviting them with an exaggerated eye-roll to join her in mocking us. I stared for a moment at their twisted faces, then turned away. Randall and Linda followed me down the poly-pebble walkway. My anger rose like a hot flash. Driving away, I fought the urge to ram the cement tigers that flanked the asphalt driveway. Sentries of the stupid.

  We quickly realized that the registered-Democrat lists were useless, so we drove up and down country roads, stopping at farmhouses, trailers, sagging prefabs, scrub-yard ranches strewn with broken lawn chairs, rotting insulation, Walmart play sets, plastic blocks and animals and vehicles coated in the same black-green mold. Linda kept track of where we went. Some people invited us in, some said Go to hell. Our uselessness hung from us like Day-Glo crossing-guard ponchos. If Eula’d been there, things might’ve gone better. Eula makes bitter humans go soft with kindness; when Linda, Randall, and I arrived on doorsteps we angered everyone—even the university hippies. Did we not see, they demanded, that wasting gasoline to hand out dead-tree leaflets in our leather shoes and Made in China clothing solved precisely shit?

  We retreated to the Gas Stop to lick our wounds, ordered a pitcher, and raised our glasses. “To Iowa’s seven electoral votes—for Kerry!” At the end of the bar sat weird, mysterious Creamer, hooded, hunched over his soda-straw beer, an empty stool beside him like an enforced buffer zone between him and the general populace. The top of his coveralls was unzipped, but his hood stayed up. He put away a good many pints, then rose unsteadily to leave.

  I turned to Regina. “Please tell me he lives within walking distance.”

  “Creamer? Nah, they’re out by Scooter’s.” Regina looked amused, a little coy.

  I shook my head: not a landmark I knew. Nor did I know to whom “they” referred.

  She gestured off behind her. “Five miles, about.”

  “After that much beer?”

  “Keeps him in shape,” she said. “You can’t see”—Regina gestured as though she were clad in Creamer’s voluminous clothing—“but that’s a fine body.” She winked, as if she knew this personally.

  I was confused. “Drinking keeps him in shape?”

  “Wish it did!” Regina hooted. “Ha! Not drinking—running.”

  “Running?”

  Regina’s patience was expiring. “Running. Home. From here. Five miles at least.”

  AS THE SEMESTER charged on, Drood rehearsals amped up (I attended just enough of them to keep my guilt at bay), and it became impossible to coordinate campaigning schedules with Randall and Linda. If I had a snatch of time, I’d go on my own, door to door, farm to farm, and I know there are meth dens and shotgun-wielding lunatics, but mostly there are Yoders and Bondorfs and Bontragers. Yes, there are decrepit cottages where junk mysteriously migrates in the yard, but mostly you’ve got old ladies tending lawn statues or watching from wheelchairs, waving at passersby. Mostly it’s Bless This Country Home, cozy homilies stenciled on faux-distressed wood, everything quilted in barn-red gingham and pine-green plaid and stamped with Holly Hobbie ducks and dusty-rose hearts. All that kountry kupboard kitsch, and most of them don’t have a clue that’s the old-fashioned way of saying No Negroes. They just think it’s kute.

  I stopped at 1215 710th Avenue, ostensibly the home of registered Democrats Norma and Burton Kramer. Prairie’s western edge is largely suburban ranches on two-acre lots with spindly trees, truck-tire planters in the yard, and cement deer with crumbling ears posed pastorally atop septic drain fields. But 1215 was a tiny farmhouse on a dead-grass rise above a swampy pond, its sloped shore ringed in cyclone fencing with coiled barbed wire on top. In the pond were two enormous, filthy swans. A cantilevered breezeway extended from a shed at the edge of the swan pen and stopped just shy of the house, its end propped on stacked cinderblocks. A side door seemed to lead to a room whose windows were covered in plywood. The house was worn free of paint but for traces between planks of an ancient aqua the color of public pool bathrooms, and though the yard had been mowed, it had no walk. A rutted trail like a herd path led up from the road. I pulled the screen door and its frame torqued in my hand. The front door behind it was so spongy with rot it barely sounded when I knocked, yet was answered by a hunched woman who stood before me in a wig like a swatch of matted camel’s hair coat. Her face was barnacled with warts and moles. She said nothing. A wheelchair sat behind her as if she’d just stood from it.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Norma Kramer?” I sounded like a demented Girl Scout.

  “You found her.” Ill-fitting dentures clacked in her mouth. Norma Kramer looked as if the life she’d lived afforded her the right to tell me to take my Thin Mints and Do-si-dos, my Johns Kerry and Edwards, shove them up my skinny white ass, and get the hell off her property. This was a white woman who could’ve called my ass white and made it the insult she intended.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Phillipa Maakestad, a volunteer for the Iowa Democrats?”

  Norma Kramer’s wig stayed put as she shook her head beneath it. “My son’s not here.”

  I studied my sheet, as though oblivious to her annoyance. “Burton? He’s on my list too.”

  Norma Kramer’s head went back and forth. “I don’t talk to people. My son talks to the people. He’s at work, else at the bar. He talks to the people. Not me.”

  I stalled. “Your son’s at work? Is there a better time to come back? Later this evening?”

  “Nights he’s at the bar. He don’t live in here anyway. The cottage’s his.” She jerked her head toward the swan pen. “Now, you ready to leave me alone?” She slammed the door.

  I headed back to the car, swans hissing behind their chain link as if trained. The shack wasn’t their home, I realized, it was Norma’s son’s. And I’m a little dense, as Ginny would be eager to corroborate, so it was only as I started down the path that I put it together—the son, the bar, the name—and: lightbulb! Burton Kramer was Creamer. He lived here with his mother. Here, à la Sweeney Todd, where the demon fowl-keepers of 710th Avenue probably butchered unsuspecting visitors and meat-pied them into swan feed. These were the registered Democrats of Prairie County. Kerry should have just conceded and spared us the pain of our own hope.

  AT HOME ON White Rabbit the next day, I was readying to head into town for an evening rehearsal, making some coffee in a one-cup drip for the road. I set the k
ettle on and ground the beans, and then a strange thing happened: the grinder’s whir ceased, but the house kept rattling. A knocking, it sounded like steam heat cranking on, but I didn’t have steam heat. A long moment passed before I understood that it was coming from outside: someone was at the door. I’d lived there a month and this was my first knock. Stepping back to get an angled sight line out the front window, I tried to see who was on my stoop—what I wouldn’t have given for a couple of pubescent, necktied Mormons, or prim African-American matrons inviting me to witness prophecies at Kingdom Hall. But no. In the October dusk, a lone figure stood silhouetted there, large and hooded, and I thought: It’s Creamer. Burton Kramer’s at my door. In one hand he held a spherical object; too big for a softball, too small for soccer, it was about the size of a human head. In the other hand he held a knife, and I understood. Creamer had decapitated his mother, then run here, carrying her head, to kill me, too. Add me to the meat pies.

  In the shadows, I flinched, and he saw, and raised his knife and began rapping its blade against the window. He leaned to peer in, and I saw it wasn’t Creamer. He smiled, gesticulated. Fear and confusion unbalanced me. When the kettle began to whistle on the stove, I lurched toward it, a Pavlovian response. Lifting it from the burner, I felt its heft and saw my hot pot as the weapon it could be. The man on the porch could get into my house whether I opened the door for him or not, but if I answered it with a boiling iron teapot and things got weird, I could heave it at him and run. I palmed my car keys off the counter and went, kettle raised, to the door.